David Stanton (Cork East, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I stand over what I have said already. I do not doubt at all the dedication of people who have thought about and put work into this. I welcome it. There are, I am told, approximately 30 relevant cases each year, which is a relatively small number. It would take five years to bed this in. The Bill states on page 11: "The Minister shall, not less than 5 years after the commencement of this Part, carry out a review of the application of the index referred to ... in order to determine the suitability of that index". It is not "after" but "not less than". I would not like to think there would be any long-fingering of this. A review will be carried out. At that stage we will have the historical information. That is about right, not too long or too short, bearing in mind that it will take a while to create and implement the index the Deputy describes.

I welcome the fact the Deputy is anxious for this to be moved on, as we all are. I am disappointed that it cannot be scheduled for next week. That is out of our hands completely. We are all on the same page. We want this to happen as soon as possible and we want the best for patients. We think the harmonised index of consumer prices, HICP, is the way to go. Deputy Daly wants a separate index. We are not clear as to how the two indices would interact. There is talk of regulation and the Minister shall make a regulation, but the Minister of the day may decide to give weight to the HICP. The amendment does not suggest one should take precedence over the other. The amendments are unclear. I suggest that in order to move this important legislation on, we park this for the moment and in a few years, when there is a review and we see how it is working, if it needs to be revisited I am sure whoever is here at that time will revisit and fix it. There is a lot of goodwill around this to make it work. I am not prepared to accept the amendments.